44 POLSKA
population of 1,125,000 in the nascent Polish kingdom. It compares to a con-
temporary population density in Bohemia and Moravia of 6/km^2 , in Germany
of 10/km^2 , and in Kievan Rus of 3/km^2 , and with total populations respectively
of 450,000, 3,500,000, and 4,500,ooo.^10
The strength of the locality was apparent in Poland from earliest times.
Though somewhat less prosperous than its French or German counterpart the
Polish locality combined the economic self-sufficiency of European settlements
with a degree of isolation comparable to that of Russia. Hence, it has been
argued, a diametrically different pattern arose from that pertaining in Muscovy,
where the localities were isolated but not economically viable, and where the
pooling of resources in a strong, communal organization was essential to sur-
vival. In Poland, the inhabitants of the localities could well afford to resist the
advances of outside authorities as unwarranted interference in their private
affairs. Their typical attitudes would be those of individual freedom, allodial
land holding, local pride, and regional patriotism. The opportunities for rulers
to construct a successful power base was less than in Western Europe, where set-
tlement was denser and connections between localities were closer, and less
again than in Muscovy, where the localities readily submitted to the centre in
the interests of protection and mutual supply. Thus, on this crucial question of
the relationship of the parts to the whole, the pattern of settlement in Poland has
been seen to be quite characteristic even in modern times. The traditional term
in Polish for the locality was gniazdo or 'nest'. It aptly expresses the strong sen-
timental bond, which tied people to the one small area where most of them
would spend their entire lives, and where the peasants on the lord's estate felt
greater affinity with their immediate neighbours of all classes, than with anyone
from outside. The sociologist, Andrzej Zajaczkowski, has argued with some
conviction that the political and social life of the pre-Partition Era depended on
the interplay of the ''grands voisinages' and the 'petits voisinages', - the former
being the political catchment areas of the great magnatial patrons, the latter
being the isolated villages and estates within each larger area.^11 In this view, the
role of the neighbourhoods set definite limits on the authority of the King and
central government, and continued even after the state had been formally
destroyed. Pan Tadeusz, the epic poem written by Adam Mickiewicz in 1834,
can be seen as the greatest of many works of Polish literature which extol the
sentimentalities and the individualism of life in a remote rural locality.
The disjunctive pattern of settlement in Poland is well depicted in the surveys
of the Crown Estates undertaken from the sixteenth century onwards. These
Lustracje (Inventories) form a historical source of the first importance, as
detailed and as thorough as the Domesday Book of Norman England. Very fre-
quently, they record widely dispersed agglomerations of villages, each clustered
round its focal castle, town, or manor, and each separated from the next by an
intervening expanse of wilderness. Although they confine themselves to the
Crown Estates there is no reason to suppose that the pattern of settlement was
any different on land owned by the nobility or by the Church. Any number of
